The present disclosure relates generally to telecommunications, and specifically to techniques for wireless communication channel management in shared frequency bands.
When communicating over a wireless communication channel, a pair of wireless communication devices, such as an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and a remote UAV controller, may detect interference on the operating frequency or frequencies associated with the wireless communication channel. Naturally, such interference may be caused by other wireless communication devices concurrently transmitting signals over one or more of the same frequency bands as those utilized by the UAV and the controller.
In some examples, the interference may be generated by another wireless communication device whose presence is unknown to one or both of the UAV and the controller. For instance, if the UAV happens to be located in or near a building containing an unassociated access point, the presence of that unassociated access point may be unknown to the controller associated with the UAV, for example, if the controller is located outdoors. Likewise, if the controller is located near another controller that concurrently transmits signals over the same operating frequency, the UAV may be unaware of the other, interfering controller when the UAV is located outside of the signal range of the interfering controller (e.g., at a relatively high altitude). In other instances, an interfering separate UAV that is unknown to the controller (and/or its corresponding UAV) may transmit interfering signals to its own other corresponding controller. In each of these example scenarios, there is a relatively high likelihood of signal “collision,” which occurs when multiple wireless communication devices whose transmission ranges overlap attempt to concurrently utilize a limited frequency bandwidth. As a result, each of the devices attempting to receive and decode a unique signal of the multiple colliding signals transmitted over a channel shared by the multiple transmitting devices may be unable to differentiate the unique signal from other colliding signals.
Therefore, improved techniques for wireless communication channel management are needed.